Washington: The US Tuesday asked Pakistan
to take appropriate steps to prosecute those responsible for the Mumbai terrorist attack that killed 166 people and injured
over 300 in November 2008.
"We have repeatedly called upon Pakistan to prosecute
those responsible for the attack, and we continue to expect
Pakistan to take the appropriate steps," State Department
spokesman P J Crowley told reporters.
"That is something that we do raise with Pakistan on a
regular basis," Crowley said when asked about a report
published in The Washington Post which said that at least half
a dozen key masterminds of the 26/11 are at large in Pakistan
and there is increasingly strong evidence of ISI`s link to
this major terror attack assault.
Pakistani government publicly denies any official link
to the 2008 attacks.
Attorney General Eric H Holder Jr has vowed to
prosecute the killers of the six Americans who were among 166
victims of the 26/11 attack.
"A senior US counter-terrorism official believes a few
mid-level Pakistani officials had an inkling of the plot but
that its dimensions surprised them. Others speculate that the
government of President Asif Ali Zardari may even have been a
secondary target because of his overtures to India and his opposition to extremism," the report said.
"Perhaps it was done by people who didn`t like the way
the ISI and the army were moving, particularly in Kashmir," a
European official was quoted as saying in the report.
"Maybe it was a rogue operation destabilizing the
Pakistanis as well as the Indians," the official said.
"An Indian court convicted the lone surviving gunman
in June. But US officials say the Pakistani trial of the
Lashkar military chief and six lower-level suspects captured
last year seems hopelessly stalled," the report said.
PTI
